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Mexican X Part XV: Shook by Xoquía
One of the hardest things about growing up Mexican [American] is learning to clean. If you don’t wash dishes right or wring out the mop properly, you leave behind an odor that moms and abuelas despise.
Choquía.
The name of this elusive but unpleasant odor has several forms: the main choquía, plus regional variants choquilla, choquío, choquillo, choquiaque, chuquía, chuquiaque, chuquije, choquis, etc.
It’s tough to explain the smell to people who aren’t familiar. A general suggestion of mold with light hints of egg and fish?
Trust me. It’s not pleasant.
I frankly don’t know if there’s a word in English (or in other dialects of Spanish) for this lingering stink, because all my life I’ve called it “choquía.”
A linguistic gift to the rest of the word.
From Mexican Spanish?
Nah. Not originally.
From Nahuatl.
In Classical Nahuatl, the word “xoquiyac” broadly meant “smelly” or “having a strong scent,” but it for the most part, it just meant a stench.
- “xoquiyac ehuatoc in eztli” — “a stench arose from the blood”
- “inic xoquiyac tēixihuintih” — “with its stench, it stupefied people”
And there were intensified variants of this adjective: xoquiyatic, xoquiyaltic, xoquipototl, xoquiyalpahtic … each a little stinkier than the last.
“Xoquiyac” was mostly used to describe the smell of fish.
- “ahmo quicua in xoquiyac in iuh michin” — “he doesn’t eat smelly stuff like fish”
The word was employed to mean “fishy smell” so much that it came to stand for “fish” in a metonymical sort of way. A fish seller, normally called a “michnāmacaqui” was also known as a “xoquiyacānāmacac” or “seller of stinky stuff” (i.e., fish).
In previous entries in the Mexican X series, I’ve shown that very few Nahuatl words beginning with an “x” (the “sh” sound in English) were borrowed into Spanish with a “ch” instead (undergoing what’s…
